"Can we not be reinforced by Pemberton's army?" "If defeated here, we lose the Mississippi Valley and probably our cause, whereas we could even afford to lose Charleston and Savannah for the purpose of defeating Buell's army, which would not only insure us the valley of the Mississippi, but our independence." The feeling of the Confederate army is curiously indicated by the following letter received by Miss Carroll as the struggle drew towards its close and filed by Mr. Stanton among his papers: FORT DELAWARE, _March 1, 1865_. Miss Carroll, _Baltimore, Md.:_ Madam: It is rumored in the Southern army that you furnished the plan or information that caused the United States Government to abandon the expedition designed to descend the Mississippi river, and transferred the armies up the Tennessee river in 1862. We wish to know if this is true. If it is, you are the veriest of traitors to your section, and we warn you that you stand upon a volcano. "CONFEDERATES." * * * * * Miss Carroll's patriotic labors continued to the end. She contributed papers on emancipation and on reconstruction, and wrote articles for the leading journals in support of the Government. "While her pen was tireless in the cause of loyalty, her sympathy and interest extended themselves toward the prisons, the battlefields, and the hospitals, and many were the individual cases of suffering and want that she relieved. She was especially successful with procuring discharges for Union prisoners, and where such were in need her own means were most generously used to give adequate help." Although the agreement with the Government was that she should be remunerated for her services and the employment of her private resources, it was not until some time after the close of the war that she endeavored, by the advice of her friends and prominent members of the War Committee, to make a public claim and establish so important a fact in the history of the war. "Miss Carroll's own feeling was a desire to make her services a free gift to her country, and her aged father, who felt the proudest satisfaction in his daughter's patriotic career, was of the same disinterested opinion."[30] [Footnote 30: Abbie M. Gannet, in the Boston _Sunday Herald_, February, 1890.] The same high and chivalrous feeling that led him to sacrifice his ancestral home to liquidate the debts incurred by others made him unwilling that his daughter should press even for the payment of the debt due for the publication of her pamphlets and campaign documents, though published at the request of the War Department on the understanding that she was to be repaid. His loftiness of feeling and unbounded generosity continued even under adverse fortunes.